


Shrike

by Mauser_Frau



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Blood, But is it really a Mauser Frau Calypso Twins fic without excessive spit?, Dead animals, Early Children of the Vault, Gen, Gore, Implied Drug Use, Maiming, Murder, Pretentious Literary References, Religious Zealots, Strongly Implied Torture, The Calypso Twins sort of giving a sermon, Tyreen PoV, Tyreen being Tyreen, Vomit, dead dove do not eat, implied sexual assault of minor characters, oh umm, rather a lot of drool, they're actually reading Shelley, vaguely implied Troyreen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:42:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26889070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mauser_Frau/pseuds/Mauser_Frau
Summary: Troy and Tyreen give their idea of a sermon.  Things get a little strange even before the locals attempt to please their God Queen.Complete as of 10/11/2020.  Please bend, fold and read the tags.
Kudos: 4
Collections: Grimeverse





	1. Chapter 1

It’s still ironic, showing up someplace to find anyone waiting for her.

Troy cuts an imposing figure from the stage. At a distance and beneath a desert cloak, no one can see how fragile his empty shoulder, how crooked his teeth or that his one ear piercing’s pretty badly infected. Gauging hasn’t been going well. He hung a fistful of anodized rings over it and clipped his headset on backwards. 

His shadow cuts like a gush of smoke across the crowd. He holds his arm up and people disappear in shade; his prosthetic and more follow.

Today’s right arm is a complicated mess. Even the mechanic they bought it off of didn’t figure it would last for more than a handful of hours. The thing grows rose vines, not real ones, but wire and scrap with brass nails for thorns. Getting them to seethe out takes a careful flexing of a nerve Troy simply does not possess on that side. 

Nonetheless, there are roses. It’s no miracle. Just mechanics. He holds that part of himself out to her. A pressure shudders the plates of the palm, a fraction of an inch he cannot move close enough.

_ Do it _ , she mouths.

There are yelps below them. Some small off-planet rodent breaks through a gamut of knives and fists. It gets thrown. Troy stumbles at the same instant, his shadow washing over Tyreen.

The thing catches, squeaking, on the thorns. 

Troy gives its squirming a resigned little smirk like he used to share with wounded mantas back on Nekrotafeyo.

Tyreen plucks the rodent off of him, folding it in her hands. It barely struggles. The sunlight’s just enough to stifle the glow as it dies. She thinks it’d be showmanly of the thing if it turned into glass rather than only sand.

She demands— “Who did that?”

A small, blond boy comes forward. She opens her hands over his head. As part of the audience crows for his blood, soap bubble thin Eridium flutters into his hair. 

Now that. That’s a miracle. And probably more money than anyone in this town has ever seen outside of the Twin Gods and their retinue. 

Tyreen stretches and shrugs. She imposes herself on the microphone and says, “That’s enough holy secrets for today. Who wants a story?”

The boy scrabbles over the stage for his treasure as she recites.

_ Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth _

_ Incestuous Change bore to her father Time,  _

_ Error and Truth, had hunted from the Earth _

_ All those bright natures which adorned its prime, _

_ And left us nothing to believe in, worth _

_ The pains of putting into learned rhyme, _

_ A lady-witch there lived on Atlas' mountain  _

_ Within a cavern, by a secret fountain. _

She doesn’t do the whole thing, but no one reads “The Witch of Atlas” in one go. Besides, the first stanza ought to bring home Revelation #2. The rest is show, same as the moment the boy finally runs off, bolting back to the dusty street tracing empty behind their makeshift stage.

Tyreen’s own shadow twists as she moves across the planks, shudders with the silver on her cloak, winks along with her as she turns to the corporate chump in the crowd filming them like the spectacle they are.

They’re going to have to hire an AV crew one of these days, but for now, plenty of overly curious idiots will start piecing together that there’s a mystery religion growing on Pandora and isn’t that an interesting thing. 

Hmm, the minute one of the corporate types kneels to her. That’s when they blow money on a camera of their own.

_ With liquid love—all things together grow _ and she stops, holding out her hands.

Troy wraps things up, promising food and guns, the usual. The two of them make their way down a flight of rickety airplane stairs and underneath a plastic sail. They stretch and yawn and screw with their belts. Troy splashes alcohol on his ear, careful not to get any into his makeup. On the other side of the cinder-block wall are headmen and people expecting the kind of miracles they can’t actually do. 

“Well, I’m gonna go mingle,” says Troy.

“Don’t mingle too hard. I don’t wanna hear you complaining your waist hurts.”

“That happened like twice.”

“Two times too many.” She thrusts her fingers in her face to make a point, stamping off before he can protest. But why would he?

True, she doesn’t usually do question and answer sessions by herself (not after that one time), let alone private worship, as Troy calls it. Speaking of Troy though, he’s been eyeing that silver fox in the audience like a cold slice of fruit on a hot day. Huh. Not his usual type.

That, and Tyreen’s cramping in that particular way that she’d rather stay standing than curl up in their truck. If she lies down, the tightness will squeeze over her back and she won’t be much better off than Troy with a migraine. 

It’s funny. A little bit funny. Conceptually funny. The supplicants will mob Troy and his uncanny frame, his penchant for monster prosthetics. They have never  _ not  _ known to stay at arm’s length from Tyreen. If that was to mock her once, now it’s to humble themselves; to whisper  _ behold _ with their broken tongues even if they don’t know what the word means.

She’ll give her brother that much. Bandits do learn, and the way slime mold does it, knowledge spreading through the whole amorphous organism from a single pain point. 

A hush holds her part of the crowd. It’s eerie and it’s wonderful. 

People dart around one another for better looks at her. A few in masks nod and mutter to themselves. The boy from the stage hangs back in the shadow of a woman who’s either his mother or his sister; somebody holding her hand to her heart as she watches Tyreen. Young women, old women, men wearing blue around their eyes all hold their breath.

Tyreen smiles at them, then moves to wipe her brow. She was up on stage longer than she figured. Not much sweat. She should drink. Out of habit from her childhood she reaches for her own water-skin. There’s a snap in the crowd and someone comes darting forward with a flacon and a glass. A pressed glass goblet with eyes in the pattern, no less. They pour and they offer it to her.

“You drink first,” says Tyreen.

Without hesitation, they do. 

She takes the goblet from them and she puts all the water back her throat in one gulp. It’s been drawn from a deep well, coming up hard and mineral-tasting. It makes her hungry, but she’s been hungry all day, pining after nightfall and skags or vagrants. For now, she shakes the last drops onto her palm and flicks them into the face of the person who grave her the water and who’s been holding their breath. “Blessings on you.” The goblet goes in a spare loop on her belt.

The crowd sways and wonders. The boy starts to talk, but he looks away, scuffing his shoes and stretching his hands behind his back. One of the men signals the person who’s still kneeling with the half-full flacon.

They’ve got an eye-patch and half a Glasgow smile. They are thin and sun-worn and losing their hair despite not seeming much older than Tyreen. They will not meet her eyes with their one.

Tyreen shifts, putting her boot down closer to their knee. 

A cringe rustles through the others, but at least the person who brought her the water gets it. Finally. “Thank you for drinking with us.” They dab at their forehead, although the drops are long gone. “We understand that you prefer to stay… That you wouldn’t want a room.”

“Yeah, that’s a thing.”

“But the sisters who brought us Revelation #1 explained that there’s something you do.”

Tyreen huffs over that. Of course word got around. Well, what was the point of running a fake religion if it didn’t? Anyway, only the really edgy or zealous converts believe the rumors about her before they hear her, see her, know her presence. Her and Troy might have to make a revelation out of the truth sooner rather than later.

But for now, between her hunger and her sore womb, she’ll take it. “Yeah,” she says. She does not waste the water in her mouth licking her lips. 

“We made a place,” says the person who brought her the water.

“Show me.”

The crowd parts and flows, letting themselves be drawn on by her. She strides out of them and beckons with both hands for them to fall into space around her. She lets her sleeve ride down her left arm, her markings glint along her muscles.

The corporate guy’s still out there filming. Perfect for him. Maybe he’ll get a closeup. 


	2. Chapter 2

Tyreen and her incidental retinue cross through a comfortingly desolate place under an ocean of sky and clouds. 

It’s been a while since she’s walked down in the dirt. At least it’s been a while for somebody who hunted barefoot in the wilds of a lost planet up until a handful of years ago. 

Tyreen pauses to scent the air. It  _ seems  _ empty here, but here lives though a twinge of nearby blood settled thirsty on the back of her tongue. Her mouth waters. She unfastens the amethyst goblet from her belt and wiggles it.

A few of the retinue stagger. They still carry that fresh wound kind of reverence that’s healed over in most of the people travelling with her these days. They cling to her shadow for shade and crash on the drift of her desires.

At least the one who poured her water in the first place does it again and without so much reluctance this time. Some spills between their steps. 

It’s fine. Tyreen drinks. They move to pull back into the clotted safety of the others, but she tips her head, indicating they should stay. 

They do, a step behind her, scuffing at some thought of their own which is only probably about her. 

“You mentioned sisters brought you into the family,” says Tyreen. She gestures to her face. “Wearing masks with extra black spots, not the talkative types?”

“Yes,” the person answers. They press their hands together. “Well, one said the first revelation, then turned on the radio.”

“You had a kid born here recently.”

“Feng’s son. He was big. The sister’s helped.”

“Was?” Tyreen makes a face. Dead infants are nothing strange on Pandora, but the bloody aroma has deepened, swelled enticing. The water’s done nothing for her. Besides, Feng’s a funny name for a bandit.

Though— “He hasn’t grown much since then,” the person explains.

“Right. I’ll have a look when we’re done here.”

“It’s not much further.”

As if she was concerned about feeling herself  _ move _ ! Well, now she’s going to have to Troy find some way to play up their supernature. She might get to read “Christabel” when they go for it. And she’ll end up with her tits out at some point if she gets to, something she holds no opinion on besides that she wants more ink of her own before that happens. She’ll get something messy and esoteric. Like a youthful hermitess, beauteous in a wilderness.

She purses her lips.

That  _ smell _ , that taste. 

The person who brought her water cants her this too-soft sort of attention. 

Things slide together in her mind.

Tyreen puts the goblet back on her belt. She sheds her cloak and tosses it at one of the others. Having swallowed her sense of her cramps, she skims down the next dune and into the gravel below, breaking after the smell as the retinue scrabbles to keep up with her sudden shots of strange directions. That, even though they know where they’re going.

Tyreen reads it in all of her senses by then.

People wait for her in a strand of succs: a couple of scrawny teenagers with cheap SMGs, all face paint church logos and sex smell up close. They’ve been out there all night and at least one had red needle glass broken under his boot. 

The wash below them is spattered with pikes, held points-up and crooked in half-buried buckets of cement. Between them, the ground trickles with blood and innards. Each pike has been hung with a body. Most are stuck through the belly and those bellies have spilled. The man who took his through the thigh bled out a few hours ago, so he hangs livid and still. The rest moan out the last of their lives at convoluted angles, bent back or turned over or left in sexual poses where she can see the gore dripping from their holes. Most have had their hands broken or their heels slit. One woman must have put up a fuss, since she’s twisted sideways with a hook through her jaw. And then there’s one more teenager, done up like the others, but his back’s been broken and sliced.

Tyreen watches his lungs suck helplessly at his open skin. She watches him longer than the others because she can rest her boot on him through the gritty silence.

One of the people on the pikes vomits in terror. It’s black and it stinks as bad as the loops of bowel Tyreen crossed to get to the guard the others turned on. For whatever reason they had.

She pulls off her right glove. And then her left. She drops them.

She eats the guard first because her mouth is pouring and she cannot help herself. His fear and his regret is so buttery tender all the way down the blow of her Leech into his body. He dies with her hand over his mouth because she doesn’t want to hear what he has to say. If she spits on him after, it’s because she has no choice.

Tyreen stands. She dabs at her chin. She holds out that same hand, now wet with drool. “Who’s idea as this?”

Footsteps. She recognizes them. The person who brought her the water stands on the far side of the husk and they bow. “Mine, God Queen.” What a look of pleasure hides in that subtle curve of their mouth. Another circumstance and it’d be damn appealing. Today though, in that filthy, seething mess: “What are you, a shrike?” Tyreen sneers.

“The sisters explained that you liked them still alive.”

She laughs at their sudden flash of meekness. Oh, it’s rich. Rich as the taste of the dying man. “Well, the sisters aren’t wrong!” She gives them no more of herself, turning with her arms wide. She beckons to the retinue with all of her body and her words. “On your knees, everybody. And  _ you _ .” That’s a fingersnap for the person who carried her water.

They quail. The flacon falls from their grasp.

In the empty sunshine, Tyreen spreads herself, her sense of life and everything she knows about picking it apart. “Hear and be holy! God Queen Tyreen will hunt her own dinner, thanks. She’s got a thing about that, actually. It’s her pleasure and so not, you know, your place to take it from her. We don’t do shit like that in this family.”

How still they kneel, how softly they breathe.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees one of the women on the pikes hold her hand to her chest. If it’s awe, if it’s pain, it’s  _ whatever  _ in the next instant as Tyreen storms to her and sucks her life away. She’s eye-wateringly sweet and her blood turns to powder on Tyreen’s bare marks as she rounds on the water bearer, genuflected with their forehead on the ground.

“You're still blessed, but you fucked up into some conditions. Your punishment for thinking I’d ever want this— your name is Shrike now and the next time the Silent Bandits come through, you  _ are  _ one.”

Shrike trembles. They do not lift their head, their eyes, their anything. But their voice is so lonesome lost. “You don’t want to eat me too?”

“I’m saving you for later. Isn’t that the point?”

“But…” 

Tyreen kicks blood-wet sand at this person, at Shrike. “Somebody stab this arrogant little shit for me.”

The retinue, they scramble, not daring to look up, but turning and flickering towards each other. Who will do this? Who will risk their own neck?

It’s the boy who stands. His sister/mother stops herself from reaching after him.

He crosses the body wreckage to lower himself at Tyreen’s feet.

Tyreen whips her knife off of her belt. It’s been banging on her goblet. She jerks the pommel under his chin so he lifts his head.

“Where, Mother?” he asks. “Where shall I do it?”

“Right palm. All the way through. Watch the bones.”

The boy swallows. It’s almost imperceptible. Another person might have missed it, but she is in her element with him for half a second of fury and ecstasy most of her followers will never know. She hunts him: if not his life, then his will. 

He, ensnared in her, takes the blade. He moves with purpose and his own reflection of her anger.

“The knife’s yours too when you’re done,” she tells him as he pulls it from the scabbard. 

Shrike opens their hand, pressing it down, down into the dust, willing themself not to shake through what comes next.

Tyreen strides into the thicket of waiting corpses. They might offend her, but there’s no sense in letting them go to waste.


	3. Chapter 3

Of the three people Tyreen has ever waited for, one never came back, one she never wants to see again and the last couldn’t leave her if he wanted to.

That’s why.

That’s why it’s ironic when people wait for her. And she cannot get enough of it now that they do.

The retinue returns, their scent heavy with desert and death and their own blood. The man who holds Tyreen’s cloak has been pulling Shrike along in a distinctly guilty sort of way. Tyreen suspects he had some hand in preparing the wash. She suspects all of them did, but it was Shrike who took the honor and the blame; Shrike who walks in dazed half-circles now unless they have someone to coax them.

The retinue returns to find Feng waiting for them. She couldn’t have overheard any conversation about her, but there she stands at the edge of town, the afternoon air turning the hem of her skirt over.

Her son is a small, sunburned little rat. He stinks and he can’t open his eyes in the desert light.

Tyreen makes Shrike reopen their hand over him, letting the blood dribble down his forehead. She says, “Blessings on the little brother. Right?”

Shrike gestures to their mouth with their left hand.

“Oh, getting preemptive with that vow of silence. Good for you!”

They give her one last shy glance. Behind them, Feng clutches her son to her chest and she weeps. The blond boy and his sister/mother have taken up a conversation with one of the headmen. The man carrying Tyreen’s cloak watches the clouds and then the crowd, the clouds again. He goes to kneel when she pulls the garment off of him, but she waves him off. “Whatever. Go tell your bar buddies. Let ‘em smell your shirt too if they want.”

He’s got no response for this, just more sky in his eyes. 

Tyreen is sore and closer to food-drunk than she’s been in a while. She moves through the streets wrapped in casual holy disdain. People watch and whisper. Some of them were waiting too, she’s sure.

Too bad the corporate guy got lost. If he’d hung around, maybe she’d stay on her feet for a while longer. 

For now, people wait for her. It’ll be more someday. That’s inevitable. Her intimate destruction will spread out and change. It won’t be like today, but satisfying in another way. 

For now, she’s not even angry. She’s not sure she ever really was. 

For now, all she wants is to do some crouches, maybe sit on the toilet and read. 

Back in the dried up field where her  _ real  _ retinue has parked, she hands her cloak off to one of her handmaiden bandits and orders a new pair of gloves for tomorrow. She punches in the code to unlock the back of the sleeper Technical.

Inside, there’s Troy, curled up on the silver fox and fast asleep. They guy’s still dressed. Troy’s down to his jeans and his back is slippery with massage oil. He looks something close to blissed out.

Tyreen climbs past the doors. She closes them, turns on the LED overheads and takes off her jacket.

Her brother does not stir. The silver fox watches, cautious and curious, as she steps out of her boots, as she wipes herself down with disposable cleaning clothes, as she fumbles the crotch of her own jeans to make sure she hasn’t bled through, then turns herself out on the bed in a reclining twist.

The amethyst goblet drops heavy onto sheets. 

Tyreen unties her belt. She takes the goblet off and holds it out to him. “Fill that up for me.”

“Ah, that’s Manna’s…” The silver fox shakes himself out of whatever else he was about to say. His bright expression after is put on. He opens the mini fridge. “Would the God Queen take water or whiskey or… I don’t know what this is in the green bottle.”

“Water,” says Tyreen. “No ice.”

He moves to wipe the desert dust from one of the eyes pressed into the outside of the goblet, but seeing her watching him, he does not. He simply fills it to the smooth line below the rim and slides it back to her.

Tyreen dips her fingers in before she drinks. She flicks water on him. “Blessing on you. No conditions. This time. Heh.”

A ghost of realization takes him. He still thanks her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally ran for KingCharon's Bordertober 2020 despite a host of technical problems on my end. Set to Excommunication by Erkka. Absolutely the most self-indulgent thing I’ve written in at least two years. Yes, I really do enjoy sloppy gore and Tyreen that much. 
> 
> The spit? Actually started including that to annoy somebody who has almost certainly never read anything I've posted under this pseud. I dug this hole. It's mine. 
> 
> Thanks extra for hanging around and reading. I really do appreciate your time.
> 
> Happy early Halloween, everybody. 


End file.
